


draw a knife and carve a little space for you

by piggy09



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Corporate, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-05
Updated: 2018-04-05
Packaged: 2019-04-18 22:45:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14223414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: Anonymous said: maybeee we can change the usual propunk power dynamic and have sarah as rachel's boss? or sarah in a higher position than rachel's.





	draw a knife and carve a little space for you

_This should be mine_ , Rachel thinks, which is the same thing she thinks every time she considers Sarah Manning. Right now, walking into Sarah Manning’s office, the thought is an insistent drumbeat:  _mine mine mine mine mine_.

But it’s not Rachel’s. It’s Sarah’s. Sarah: sitting behind the desk in the office on the top floor of SESTRA Corp’s headquarters. Her hair is a mess, probably because she keeps running her fingers through it. She’s wearing a suit, but the jacket is discarded and the sleeves are shoved up. Everything she have should have been Rachel’s.

“Hey, there you are,” Sarah says, looking up as Rachel enters. “Rachel, right? C’mon in.”

“How can I help you, Ms. Manning,” Rachel says, smoothing down her skirt and taking the seat across the desk. It’s the same height as Sarah’s chair – an utter waste. If it was her office–

But it isn’t.

“Sarah,” says Sarah. “Just looking over your work. You’re in Marketing, yeah? Evie says you do great shhh–work. Your – ideas. They’re good. You’re efficient. Evie Cho never talks nice about  _anyone_ , but she had to  _work_  to find complaints. I’m impressed.”

Something in Rachel’s chest screams, once, sudden and pleased. She wishes it would shut up. “Thank you,” she says. “I do my best to be a valuable contribution to the company.”

“So,” Sarah says. She stands up and shoves her hands in the pockets of her trousers, paces around the office. Oh, for – she’s barefoot. Her toenails are unpainted. The worst part is that Rachel can’t even say Sarah doesn’t deserve this; everyone knows it was Cosima Niehaus’ brains that made SESTRA Corp, but Sarah Manning who took Cosima’s ideas out of her basement lab and made them  _marketable_. Sarah Manning who talked everyone into creating and packaging and selling Cosima’s products. Sarah Manning who built this place, from the bones up.

Sarah Manning, who isn’t wearing shoes.

“Figure you’re looking to climb the ladder,” she says. “You’ve been doin’ a bloody good job of it so far, joined our internship program what – eight months ago? – and you’re already VP of your bloody department. You’re insane, if you don’t mind me sayin’ so.”

Rachel smiles flatly.

“Alright, you do mind. Sorry.” A grin slices Sarah’s mouth, a white flash of sharp teeth. It’s savage and almost interesting and then it’s gone again. “I’m talkin’ off my arse here. The point is that I want to steal you from Evie Cho. Like I said, know you want to climb the ladder – you could do it that way, take over Evie’s position in, Christ, maybe a year or two, or you could join up as my assistant and…try something else.”

“You’re looking for an assistant,” Rachel says. Her mind is whirring through the possibilities – Sarah is right, both options are viable. This is the bigger risk for the bigger reward. Heads: Rachel works a desk job for the rest of her life, fetching Sarah Manning’s coffee and stewing in her own resentment. Tails: Sarah sees something in Rachel, offers her – something. SESTRA has a four-person board. There is no VP. God, there’s potential there.

“I am,” Sarah says. She perches on the edge of her desk, sprawled out like a modeling campaign and not at all like a CEO. “You interested?”

Rachel doesn’t even hesitate before she says “Of course.”

* * *

It turns out Sarah already has an assistant – an extremely high-strung woman named Alison, who buzzes around getting Sarah’s tea and telling Sarah she works too much and sniffing every time she has to change Sarah’s schedule around. She doesn’t need another assistant.

“‘Right hand’ doesn’t work on the paperwork,” Sarah says offhandedly, signing a contract Alison is holding her while she struggles into heels on her way to a conference room. “Whole position was more of a concept. Cosima’s idea, she’s good with concepts. I just need help with all this sh– bloody – it’s a lot. Never went to business school or anythin’. Duval’s gonna be at this meeting, Alison? Didn’t we say we’d never work with him again?”

“We tried,” Alison says, ponytail skewering through the air as she walks on Sarah’s other side, “but he wouldn’t let go of the biotech, said it was his idea and his patent–”

“Well we’ll find other bloody biotech, won’t we? You seen how he treats his female employees?”

“Sarah, I’m sorry, I don’t know what the alternative is–”

And they’re in the conference room, and Sarah has utterly changed. She is, suddenly, magnetic; Rachel can’t take her eyes off of Sarah’s smile and the way that her suit is suddenly the perfect backdrop. It’s like she flipped on a switch. Rachel catches Alison’s eye from behind Sarah and sees Alison mouth at her:  _I know_. 

“Alright,” Sarah says. “Sorry I’m late, there are so many companies competing for SESTRA’s time. You know how it is. Let’s get started, alright?”

* * *

Alison goes home promptly at 3pm – “I have to pick my children up from school!” – but Sarah won’t leave the office, and Rachel refuses to go home before Sarah does. She sits at the desk outside of Sarah’s office, patiently working her way through a project whose potential for success is, she thinks, very high. Through the glass wall she can see Sarah making phone calls, typing, running her hands through her hair over and over again until it’s a tangled, static-filled mane that sticks to her shoulders. She drains four bottles of water. She is, quite frankly, a bit of a mess.

Rachel’s eyes are starting to itch from need for sleep by the time Sarah stumbles out of her office, cursing to herself lowly under her breath.

“Holy shit,” she says. “ _Rachel?_ It’s the middle of the bloody night, what the hell are you doing here.”

Rachel blinks up at her, placidly. “Working,” she says, feeling a smug curl of satisfaction in her chest at the shock on Sarah’s face.

“Go  _home_ ,” Sarah says. “You’ve been here – what – sixteen hours? Christ, we pay overtime, but not every bl– day. Can’t make a habit of it, yeah?”

“I had work to do,” Rachel says, powering off her monitor and standing up. “I’m so sorry, Ms. Manning. I lost track of time.”

Sarah leans against Rachel’s desk, considers her. “Bullshit,” she says.

“I’m sorry?”

“All of that,” Sarah says. “Bullshit. I’m your supervisor, I know the work I gave you, there isn’t that much of it. And I know that you know I told you to call me Sarah. Bein’ a bitch gets sh–things done, I’m alright with it if you want to get things done, I’m not alright if you’re a bitch to me for no bloody reason. You got that?”

They stare at each other in the dark silence of the office. For one vertigo-second Rachel thinks: maybe Sarah’s position shouldn’t be Rachel’s, after all. Then she pulls herself together.

“I didn’t mean it as an insult,” she says. “I’m sorry if my behavior was disrespectful.” She pauses, forces it out: “Sarah.”

“It’s fine,” Sarah says, still wary. Then abruptly it blows over and she sighs, runs a hand through her hair for another interminable time. “C’mon, the lights’ll start shutting off soon. Security’s bloody passive-aggressive. You got a car?”

“Not yet.”

“Alright, I’ll drop you off. Or the driver will, I guess. Y’know I still can’t drive? Keep meaning to get lessons, never have the bloody time for it. Never have the bloody time for anything.”

“Sarah.”

“Yeah.”

“You aren’t wearing shoes.”

“Oh shite.” Sarah looks at her feet. “I mean – Christ, I dunno, something that isn’t shite. I’m not supposed to say shite, screws up our numbers or some bollocks. Shite. Bollocks isn’t better – I’m gonna. Get my shoes.” She goes back into the office. She grabs heels and slings them over her fingers, walks out barefoot again. It shouldn’t be charming. It really, really shouldn’t be charming.

They take the elevator down and Rachel has the dizzying, strange experience of making small talk with Sarah Manning, CEO of SESTRA Corp. How long have you been in the city? I still don’t know where to get good tea. When’d you move out of England? Do you miss it? Don’t your feet hurt? And the elevator touches down. Sarah slings herself into her car like she’s used to it – the sleek black car, the buttery seats, the driver who is already pulling out to head, presumably, for Sarah’s place of residence. Sarah leans forward and murmurs the change in address and they’re driving to Rachel’s apartment. All of this, really, should be Rachel’s. Rachel wants it so desperately she’s going to choke on it.

“You get used to it,” Sarah says.

Rachel looks over at her.

“All of this,” Sarah says, gesturing around herself towards nothing in particular. “I know it’s a lot. You get used to it.”

“Have you?” Rachel says. “Gotten used to it.”

Sarah smiles at her, sad and wry. “Not really,” she says. “Yeah. No. Not really.” She turns and looks out the window; the conversation lapses into silence.

* * *

Sarah drinks a mountain of tea during the hours of 6am to 3pm, and then after Alison leaves she drains six water bottles. She gets there before Rachel and makes Rachel leave before she does, which frustrates Rachel to no end. Her hair is always tangled. Her feet are thick with callouses, because she roams the halls of this building barefoot. She knows everyone by name. 

Rachel might actually be in love with her, or at least nursing a very severe crush. 

In her defense: Sarah is unfairly beautiful. She doesn’t even have to work at it; she barely wears makeup, her hair is tangled, her suits – if not crumpled – at least look like they should be. But she cares about this company, down to the bones of her, and it shows. It’s been her life for six years, after a high school dropout and a stoned biology student got together and made the most powerful and promising tech company in all of North America. Rachel has had some form of a crush on SESTRA Corp since she wrote a paper on it in graduate school. Of course it would transfer. Sarah  _is_ SESTRA Corp. It makes sense.

She wishes it would stop, though.

* * *

Three weeks after Rachel’s first conference at Sarah’s right hand, she taps knuckles on the glass door of Sarah’s office.

“Yeah,” Sarah says, and then looks up when Rachel enters. “Oh Christ, where’s the fire.”

“For once I’m not the bearer of bad news,” Rachel says, and puts her tablet on Sarah’s desk, spins it, shows her the image and text on the screen. “Astrid Boylan.”

Sarah’s already taken the tablet, is scrolling through the emails and the emails and the hints and threats and promises. “Holy shit,” she says. “You madwoman. You’re  _stealing_  Olivier Duval’s second-in-command?”

“They treat their female employees poorly,” Rachel says. “You said so yourself. She’s willing to be…stolen…by SESTRA, for an increase in wages and an ironclad promise of a harassment-free environment.”

“Along with Duval’s tech.”

“Legally speaking, it wouldn’t be his tech. It would be very similar tech that we are creating in-house.”

Sarah snorts. “Legally speaking,” she mutters under her breath. “Shite.  _Holy_ shite.” She flicks her eyes up from the tablet, studies Rachel with something canny and cunning. “This isn’t some passive-aggressive warning bollocks about easily-dissatisfied right-hand-women, is it?”

God, she’s smart. Rachel’s heart thrashes like a desperate fish. “No,” she says, “I’m very happy here.” She folds her hands in front of her and chokes down the actual truth:  _No, I’m just trying to impress you and it’s terrible_.

“Good,” Sarah says. “You tell me if you’re unhappy, at this point I’d do some crazy shit to keep you here.” She gives one more scroll through and then hands the tablet back to Rachel. “Move the paperwork through, send Astrid to R&D when she gets here and prep them. I gotta tell Cos.”

Their hands brush when Sarah passes Rachel the tablet. Rachel thinks a startled expletive and then thinks  _Cos_ , and then thinks  _Cosima_ , and then thinks  _Cosima Niehaus_. “Of course,” she says. She makes her way to the door.

“Rachel.”

She turns, looks over her shoulder. “Sarah.”

“You did good,” Sarah says. “Really good. You can take the day off, if you want. Think of it like all the time you could’ve been spending dealing with Olivier Duval’s  _bullshit_.”

“I’m not going to take the rest of the day off,” Rachel says. “There’s work to be done.”

Sarah smiles at her – that smile Rachel has been looking for, sharp and full of teeth. “Alright,” she says. “Back to work, then.”

* * *

Rachel can see them through the glass, later: Cosima Niehaus sprawled on the couch in Sarah’s office, head in Sarah’s lap, hands gesticulating wildly. Sarah looks down at her with an expression of unbearable fondness. She nods, tosses in quick things Rachel can’t hear, sends Cosima spiraling to higher and higher heights.  _This should be mine_ , Rachel thinks, but she means it differently. She means it melancholy. That should be hers: the way Sarah’s face twists up, looking at Cosima. Rachel wants it too.

* * *

They go to New York. They go to Taipei. They go to Hong Kong. They go to London, and Sarah drags Rachel to a tasteless little diner downtown where Sarah almost cries into her cup of “real bloody tea.” Alison knows how Rachel takes her tea, and Alison sighs over Rachel’s schedule, and at some point Rachel truly did move to Sarah’s right hand and she isn’t quite sure when it happened. She’s too busy to check – juggling deals, slashing budgets, slashing throats. Sarah is the shining light of this company, a future everyone can believe in. Rachel makes sure that the future  _happens_. She gets things done. 

It’s mostly just the two of them. Rachel does meet Cosima face-to-face, and sometimes Sarah drags both of them out for drinks, but mostly Sarah lives in the office and so that means, mostly, it’s just Rachel and Sarah. Rachel never sees Sarah mention a family. Sarah never goes out on dates, never sees friends besides Cosima. She lives this job. As long as Rachel keeps living the job too, Sarah is hers.

Partners. She wishes her heart would stop the strangle, terrified choke it does every time she hears that word. She wishes the word she could use is  _terrified_ , instead of something else entirely.

* * *

One night Sarah passes out on the couch in her office and Rachel just watches her, for a moment, instead of waking her up. Everything would be easier if Sarah wasn’t Rachel’s age, if she wasn’t so beautiful. Or maybe it would be harder. Who knows. 

Eventually Rachel puts her hand to Sarah’s shoulder, and wakes her up.

* * *

Rachel is sitting at Sarah’s desk and Sarah is sprawled over her couch, making a phone call with the cell she has crushed between her shoulder and skull while also typing up a report. She’s a mess, but Rachel loves her anyways.

“No,” Sarah says, “no, no, you promised us this last  _month_ , you can’t – I have the numbers right here, you’re lying to my face, you really think we appreciate that here? You think you can afford to lose us as a partner? Where are you gonna go? You–”

Rachel slides neatly under Sarah’s sprawled out legs, shows Sarah her laptop screen. Sarah jabs Rachel in the shoulder a few times, excitedly, and then says: “Yeah, I actually just got the most interesting report, you wanna tell me why you–”

She gets what she wants out of the phone call. After she hangs up she bangs her heel against the arm of the couch, cackles. “ _Yes_ ,” she says. “Bloody bastards. You’re a lifesaver.”

“I try,” Rachel says. She should stand back up. She doesn’t. Sarah’s legs are warm. 

Sarah’s hand is warm, too, where it folds around Rachel’s hand. Sarah is playing with their fingers, her hand warm and just a little rougher than Rachel’s hand. “Sometimes I don’t know how I got anything done without you,” Sarah says. “Obviously I did, ‘cause I ran this company for – shit, five bloody years. But still. Glad you’re here.”

Is Rachel having a heart attack? She doesn’t remember the symptoms of a heart attack off the top of her head, but she thinks it’s likely this is what this is. The way her heart is shuddering and pulling itself apart. “Always,” she says, voice strange and thin. She squeezes Sarah’s hand, once.

“Sometimes I wish I wasn’t your boss,” Sarah says, in a distant voice.

Rachel exhales through her nose, one short warm burst. “You overestimate your power over me.”

“Piss off,” Sarah says, a grin threatening to break through the corner of her mouth. “You know what I meant.”

“No,” Rachel says. “The workings of your mind are a mystery to me, as always.”

Sarah slides her fingers through Rachel’s fingers, and back again, and doesn’t stop moving. She doesn’t take her eyes off Rachel’s hand. “I love Cosima,” she says. “Cosima is – she’s not like anyone else I’ve ever met, she’s my best friend, she’s my sister.” She sighs. “We got to be friends first. Before all of this. ‘fore I was CEO and she was – whatever the hell her position is this month. We had something. Outside of all this shite.”

“This–” Rachel starts, and can’t bring herself to say  _shite_. “This is your life,” she says. “I’m glad to be a part of it.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Sarah says. “God, I just–” She yanks her hand out of Rachel’s hand and shoves both of her hands through her hair, frantic. “I can’t make – I can’t make mistakes. Everyone’s counting on me, I can’t. I can’t make mistakes. I can’t do this.” Her hair is starting to spring away from her head, a static cloud, and Rachel snaps.

She grabs Sarah’s wrists. “Stop,” she says. “Don’t do that.”

Sarah lets out a horrible, shuddery breath, and then sits up and crashes her mouth into Rachel’s. Rachel lets go of Sarah’s wrists, from pure shock; her brain is reeling, rolling around, trying to find something that makes sense in all of this. Sarah is kissing her. Sarah – Sarah Manning – she can’t do it, her brain won’t hold onto it, it moves on to the patent meeting they have tomorrow and what she’s going to wear and Sarah’s mouth is moving away from hers and no, no, wait, Rachel grabs Sarah’s face and pulls her back again. 

She puts it all into this: the months and months of desperate straining, the ambition that partway through stopped being anything like ambition. The way Sarah looks when she leaves a meeting, flushed and triumphant, the way she spins half-circles in her chair, the face she made when she drank Rachel’s tea once by mistake, her bare feet on the ground. Sarah. God, Sarah.

Eventually she runs out of things to say and she has to stop. She leans back, swallows. 

“Oh,” Sarah says.

“Yes,  _oh_ ,” Rachel snaps. “You idiot.”

“Oh shit,” Sarah says, and Rachel groans through her teeth and pulls Sarah back to her again. She pulls Sarah’s legs away from Rachel’s lap and straddles them, feeling the warm weight of Sarah underneath her; through this glass wall anyone could see them, anyone, but there’s no one there – it’s only the two of them. It’s always only the two of them.

Sarah’s teeth on Rachel’s lip. Sarah’s tongue on the inside of Rachel’s teeth. Sarah’s hands sliding under Rachel’s blazer, warm through the sheer fabric of Rachel’s shirt. They kiss for – hours, maybe. Days. Months. Years.

Sarah laughs against Rachel’s mouth, hysterical chuckles, and Rachel leans back. “What,” she says.

“This is the worst bloody idea,” Sarah says.

Rachel tucks Sarah’s hair behind her ear, cups her face with one hand. “We’ll handle it,” she says. “We always do.”

“Yeah,” Sarah says. “Guess we do.” She slides her hands down to Rachel’s hips. Rachel smiles at her, and leans back in.

**Author's Note:**

> It's strange  
> But I don't need space from you  
> And every single thing you do  
> I like  
> I've been chased  
> Maybe I just knew I had to wait for you  
> Draw a knife and carve a little space for you  
> It feels nice
> 
> I make my rules and my own plans  
> I got no room for no man, that's my way  
> That's my way  
> Then I saw you in a dream right  
> I wanna call you  
> I got a feeling, I can't name  
> I can't name  
> \--"It's Strange," Louis the Child
> 
> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


End file.
